President Bola Tinubu has unveiled a broad pact with Nigerian manufacturers to guarantee reliable power for industries and industrial clusters, expand access to affordable long-term financing for productive enterprises, and deepen implementation of Nigeria First Policy to ensure government procurement prioritises locally made goods.
Other aspects of the pact include addressing insecurity and an accountable implementation of the Nigeria Industrial Policy (NIP).
Tinubu disclosed the pact on Tuesday in Lagos in his keynote address at “The 6th Adeola Odutola Lecture,” organised by Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) as part of its 54th Annual General Meeting (AGM).
The theme of the AGM was, “Leveraging National Industrial Policy to Position Nigeria as Africa’s Industrial Hub.”
Tinubu was represented by Minister of State, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (FMITI), Senator John Owan Enoh.
The president said, “So let me state our national ambition in a single sentence. Nigeria will not be Africa’s warehouse that is storing what others make.
“Nigeria will be Africa’s workshop, making what Africa needs and sending it with pride across the continent and beyond.
“No nation has ever industrialised by government alone, and none has done it without government.
“So today, I offer the manufacturers of Nigeria a compact. First, energy. No factory can compete in the dark. Therefore, we will continue to prioritise gas for industry and reliable power for industrial clusters because the cost of energy is the cost of everything you make.”
Tinubu added, “Second is capital. We will work with the Bank of Industry and the banking system to channel patient, affordable, long-term finance to productive enterprise so that easing monetary conditions will reach the factory floor and not only the trading floor.
“Third, markets. Through the Nigerian First policy, public procurement will favour Nigerian goods made to standard. And through trade facilitation, including the National Single Window, we will cut the time and the cost of moving goods across our ports and borders.
“Fourth, security. Our industrial corridors, highways, and supply routes will be protected because a supply chain is only as strong as its safest road.”
The president stressed, “Fifth, accountability. Implementation of the Nigeria Industrial Policy (NIP) will be measured, will be reported, and will be published.
“For clearance, I have directed the FMITI through the Industrial Revolution Work Group to hold a standing quarterly delivery dialogue with MAN so that you can hold us to account, which is what Nigeria asks of you.”
Tinubu said when the history of this decade would be written, “Let it record that in October 2026, in this hall in Lagos, the government and the manufacturers of Nigeria stopped asking whether this nation could make things for Africa and started making them.
“Let it record that we chose production over dependence, value over volume, and the long road of building over the short comfort of importing. And let it record that when Africa looked for its workshop, it found Nigeria ready.”
He said Nigeria had every claim to be the country that made what market bought as one of the five African countries whose manufacturing value added exceeded $610 billion.
He declared, “We got the population. We got the entrepreneurial energy. We got the natural resources. And now, we got a policy in place.”
He tasked manufacturers to invest in capacity so that their plants could run at the scale the market now demanded.
The president also challenged manufacturers to look outwards by treating “the African market not as an afterthought but as your home market”.
He stated, “Government will clear the road but you must drive the trucks.
“Meet the standards of the markets you seek, because a product that cannot pass inspection in Accra or Nairobi is not yet an export.”
He also advised manufacturers to deepen backward integration so that more of what they made would begin on Nigerian farms and in Nigerian mines.
According to Tinubu, history does not remember nations for what they dug out of the ground, it remembers them for what they made of it.
He stated, “For too long, we exported our cocoa and imported our chocolate. We exported our crude and imported fuel.
“We exported our cotton and imported our clothes.
“We exported our young people’s talent and imported the products of their genius. That chapter is closing, and very fast. We are writing a new one, and we are writing it in factories.”
Delivering the 6th Adeola Odutola Lecture, former Director-General of United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Dr. KandehKolleh Yumkalla, tasked the federal government to produce a clear energy policy for the country.
Yumkalla stated that energy policy must be part of an effective industrial policy.
He said, “Energy policy is industrial strategy. If we do not fix that, industry will die because no industrial strategy can succeed without reliable electricity.
“You know the story. It (energy) is killing your industry. Manufacturers spent an estimated N1.3 trillion on self-generated power in 2025, up from N781 billion in 2023, with energy now accounting for as much as 35 to 40 percent of production costs. Here, some people even say 60 per cent of their operating costs.
“Whereas energy makes up roughly between 5.0 and 15 per cent manufacturing costs in countries such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico and South Africa.”
Yumkalla also said an industrial policy must be connected to agriculture policy.
According to him, “Your fertiliser production means that agriculture ministry should now subsidise fertiliser for the farmers so they can access that fertiliser, creating demand. That is how agriculture policy connects to industrial policy also.
“This is about integrating policy around the industrial vision of the country.”
He also urged the Ministry of Finance to back FMITI to drive the country’s industrialisation efforts.
Dike Onwuamaeze
Follow us on:
